Engineer Using Big Data to Help Solve Cold Cases

The term “big data” has caught on in recent years as a way to talk about massive quantities of calculations, figures, and computations made by extremely high-tech machines like the supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Now a national nonprofit group that includes a professor from UT’s Tickle College of Engineering has found a new use for such data: crime solving.

“The idea is to try to help solve cold cases through the use of big data and computer analytics,” said David Icove, UT’s UL Professor of Practice in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “Data can reveal what the human component might not be able to distinguish.”